When we were in Thailand last year, there were times we felt like small children: lost in a world with completely unfamiliar rules and language, slowed by confusion and dependent on the kindness and patience of strangers. Japan wasn’t quite so unfamiliar. We’re hip to a lot of Japanese pop culture in the U.S., from kaiju movies to teppanyaki (here a form of dinner-and-a-show, there nothing more or less than a grill serving bar bites). Most of us can manage an arigato gozaimas or konnichi-wa. But there are aspects of Japanese life and culture that’d surprise many Americans, who tend to believe the Japanese all smoke, they eat only sushi and they can’t even drive. I suppose those ideas may have been true to some extent in the past; I couldn’t tell you. I do know they’re ludicrous now. It’s like saying all Americans carry guns, eat only McDonald’s and smoke in every workplace. The Japanese can drive just fine, but they have much better, cheaper, faster options than dealing with it. In that respect I envy them!
It is true, however, that Tokyo is crowded beyond belief. It’s also true the population’s ethnic heterogeneity rivals that of the American heartland. But if you’ve ever lived in a big American city, which I have, you know the locals find ways to filter and escape urban overstimulation. It’s the same there. The green spaces one encounters in Japanese cities feel like actual respites from the hubbub. You can hear yourself think. Even in neighborhoods bristling with skyscrapers, there are so many electric cars and metro stations, the populace so devoutly still and self-contained, one can hear the birds singing. Tree branches whisper against each other. Hummingbird hawk-moths whir over meticulously maintained flower gardens. Large-billed crows and ravens, the loudest of Tokyo’s citizens, squawk at passing pedestrians. No one speaks to each other or on their phones on Japanese subway cars. A person breathes differently in Tokyo or Kyoto than in New York or Los Angeles. The air feels crisper, cleaner, leaving space for the alluring, somehow never competing fragrances of food stalls and restaurants.
The Japanese understand they have to get along to go along, the reverse of what we hear in America. They don’t shove in line or even complain about the wait. Yes, they pack way too many people onto each subway train, but they make room and I’ll be damned if all those people don’t somehow fit. The Japanese behave as if your need to get to work or play is as urgent as theirs, and that courtesy and consideration adds up over time. It makes you more aware of other people. You want to connect. You want to make their day as they’ve helped make yours.
For a country with one of the most advanced, conscientious recycling systems on earth, it may seem strange that public trash cans are few and far between in Japanese cities, but that’s because the Japanese pack their own refuse home so it can be recycled or disposed of properly. Even Japanese train tracks are free from debris. Similarly, we saw a significant fraction of people all over Japan wearing masks as if the pandemic were in full swing. I don’t think that was all from paranoia. Rather, I believe they didn’t want to worry the rest of us every time they caught a cold or suffered from allergy sniffles. There isn’t much crime here; time and again I saw unchained bikes and other valuable property simply resting outside people’s homes. In American cities, they’d be gone in 60 seconds.
Prices are cheaper in Japan, and certainly some of that is due to the relatively weak yen and modest salaries. (The average Japanese income is less than two thirds of ours.) But it’s also true food costs in particular are much lower than in the U.S., especially in areas that usually overcharge. Konbini food is delicious, often for pocket change. Even the food in Disney theme parks is at least as good as the fare in Orlando or Anaheim but at a fraction of the cost. Fried fare aside, most Japanese meals are healthier and fresher than ours. Seasonality and the taste of the ingredients themselves are emphasized over sheer bulk and calorie saturation. Consequently, one doesn’t see many overweight folks in Japan — yet we never felt they were looking at our fluffy bodies askance, even in onsen.
I know next to nothing about Shinto, but I do have a limited understanding of Buddhism. One of the things I love about it is it doesn’t just respect other religions in a grudging, principled way; it admires and makes room for them. Christians, Jews and Muslims may believe the First Commandment excludes other faiths, but Shinto has no such objections. If you want to believe in both kami and the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, more power to you. Modern-day Shinto is often observed as more of a lifestyle than a dogmatic canon of doctrines and mythologized history. It’s a guide toward making responsible, conscientious, empathetic behavioral choices that benefit everyone rather than a recipe for securing a more desirable afterlife for oneself, and maybe that’s a perspective a lot of us would find beneficial if we could find a way to welcome and absorb it.
Look, don’t get me wrong, Japan has its problems. It struggles with widespread resistance to immigration of any sort. It hasn’t been quick to admit past mistakes — See the issue of World War II-era “comfort women,” if you can stomach that godawful history. Despite the Japanese government’s official position that workweeks should be 40 hours long, the truth is sarariiman (“salary men”) are expected to leave work after their bosses and often put in sabisu zangyo (“service” or unpaid overtime), plus seemingly mandatory after-hours “fun” with one’s coworkers. Japanese work-life balance is so regularly out of whack that there’s a word, karoshi, that means death from overwork or from work-related stress. About one in 10 Japanese workers are still at some risk of it.
Having said that, my respect for Japanese people’s care and perfectionism in their work has been high since I interacted with Japanese superiors and coworkers at Warner Bros. in the early 2000s. Our visit to their nation has only increased it. I have new respect for the Japanese hospitality culture of omotenashi, “public face (hiding) nothing,” which emphasizes unreserved consideration without expectation of anything in return other than the satisfaction of having offered excellent service. There’s no real tipping culture in Japan, so workers are paid a fair rate regardless of how customers evaluate the service they’ve offered. Their kindness and thoughtfulness weren’t an act; they’re part of the “meaning of life” in Japan. It’s what being a person is for. Tell me that wouldn’t be a welcome adjustment to American culture.
Because we saw genuine interest and courtesy on every face, we came to understand that even in what sometimes felt like an alien environment, people are still human beings. They want to do good. They want to be respected by others. They want to connect. Their kids in particular were eager to try out their classroom English. We never felt judged or excluded. We were guests and were treated as such regardless of our skin color or country of origin, and that seemed to hold true for Chinese, Korean and Black American travelers as well. If I made a cultural faux pas, they seemed to regard it, not as oafishness on my part, but as their own failure to properly show me what to do or how to do it. Looking back on that, and after reflecting on how Americans have treated foreigners including the Japanese in the past (not to mention our current, shameful wave of xenophobia and racism), I find myself humbled if not downright ashamed.
I think my biggest takeaway from our time in Japan was a long, deep, continuing meditation on how we interpolate our history into our present. Again, Japan’s track record on this is far from perfect, but ours is at least as disgraceful. Japanese schoolchildren are taught about the Nanjing Massacre — often and all too appropriately called “the rape of Nanjing” — with more candor than many American kids are taught about slavery and how that instigated the American Civil War. Their war history may focus on the suffering of Japanese people including Allied bombing and casualties of the Battle of Okinawa, but it also highlights the atrocity and uselessness of war as a tactic. The history of Japan, from ancient times through the Edo isolationist period to the highs and lows of the 20th century, is all on display on every street corner. It’s all there. But it’s there side by side by with LED screens and a public transit system decades ahead of ours and a hunger for brighter tomorrows. History and tradition are woven into modern Japanese life to a degree I find beautiful and inspirational. We Americans struggle to reconcile our own past mistakes and outrages with the reverence we hold for our “founding fathers” and other Enlightenment Era figures. We can’t seem to talk about all that without mythologizing even the worst of it. I don’t believe I understand how the Japanese manage that better than we do, but I do think it’s important and useful to consider.
It’s a wonderful country, from its most chaotic cities to its most pastoral countryside, and I think both and Amanda and I feel it’ll call to us again down the road. I’m eager to learn what we might discover on that hoped-for future visit.
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